Study of a Thermal Annealing Approach for Very High Total Dose Environments

Total dose effect remains one challenging issue for electronics systems intended to space applications. For high total dose missions, like Jupiter missions, or for scientific instruments for which functionality and precision must be guaranteed, dose effect is one of the main drawbacks. So, new solutions must be found in order to ensure the reliability of the mission. In this paper, an analysis of a thermal annealing approach is done. This approach consists of applying isothermal annealing cycles to a device such that its electrical characteristics can be regenerated after being degraded by total ionizing dose. The analysis is based on experimental results obtained on Power MOSFET and CMOS APS imager. The impact of electric field during annealing is also investigated. It is shown that thermal annealing can be applied to electronic devices in order to extend their lifetime.